This is the least informal writing I have yet seen from Merton. And the most philosophical. Neither trait hurts the book, but I did find myself taking longer than usual to decide whether I would finish the book. Then about a third of the way through I began to start realizing that this could be one of his strongest works ever.

The topic is about Adam vs. the New Adam, Christ. And the Fall. And Baptism. It does not sound all that original, as St. Paul covers this quite well in his epistles. But in his usual fashion, Merton finds something new to say, and a way of saying it that holds the reader’s interest.

Let’s supply some excerpts to demonstrate the point. From the chapter “Life in Christ”:

Everything that has the power to make us real, to bring us to the fulfilment of our destiny, to perfect happiness, and peace with ourselves and one another, is contained in God’s will for us: first His will as implanted in our very nature, and then His will as supernaturally revealed. To want to know something besides this one great good, to desire to add the knowledge of evil to the knowledge of good by turning away from God, is to turn away from life itself and from reality. We die the death.

(pg. 185)

And again from the same chapter:

[T]he patience of the charitable man [is not] merely a hidden weapon by which he shames and defeats his enemies. It is the strength which knows the difference between good and evil, and which knows how to overcome evil with good. Without this strength, this alchemy which silently and inexorably destroys evil, the passive aspects of Christian charity would have no reason for existence. They are never really negative. They are the negation of evil, and evil is a negation. Hence even the passive elements in charity are positive, constructive forces. Very often they are more constructive than the more obvious and affirmative acts of the charitable man.

(pp. 191-192)

So as not to spoil it for you, I will omit the part where Merton gives the best explanation I have ever seen as to why Adam (and we along with him) lost his immortality.

This book has the same basic objective as Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Seeking Spiritual Direction, but it’s much shorter and addresses some topics not covered by Dubay, such as whether you should pay for spiritual direction.

It also advises the reader about preparing for sessions with your director. There is a questionnaire designed to help you identify your “root sin”, which is primarily what holds you back from progress. Finally, there is also a section on how to develop what is called a Plan of Life, which is not altogether different than how the monastic orders structure their day between prayer and work, and which anyone can benefit from.

NOTE: Dan Burke and Fr. Bartunek started and continue to lead a blog with several other contributors (such as Anthony Lilles) on Roman Catholic spirituality called RCSpiritualDirection.com and it can be found along with other recommended blogs at our Online Spiritual Reading link at the upper right of this web page.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/table-of-contents/feed/0unwobblingpivotImagePatience of a Sainthttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/patience-of-a-saint/
https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/patience-of-a-saint/#commentsTue, 15 Apr 2014 04:11:55 +0000http://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/?p=642Patience of a Saint

by Andrew M. Greeley (1987)

If you have read this book, I would guess you liked it. If you haven’t, there’s only one way to find out. This is sort of the Green Eggs and Ham entry on the Men’s Spiritual Reading List.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/patience-of-a-saint/feed/1Patience_of_a_saint_3unwobblingpivotJesus of Nazarethhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/jesus-of-nazareth/
https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/jesus-of-nazareth/#commentsTue, 15 Apr 2014 02:04:59 +0000http://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/?p=631Continue reading Jesus of Nazareth→]]>Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

by Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI (2007)

This book could be Pope Benedict’s version of “What I did on my summer vacation.” True. When it comes to theology this pope was a trekkie in every sense of the word. And I love him for it. I love that he didn’t let his job as the keeper of the papacy hold him down. He just had the good taste to make sure he did this stuff on his own time. Not that he let that give him an excuse for shoddy workmanship. This book was world class all the way.

My favorite parts are the entire chapter on The Lord’s Prayer and the chapter on the parables, with particular mention to his treatment of The Good Samaritan. Another tip of the hat goes to the part called “The Dispute Concerning the Sabbath” in the chapter on the Sermon on the Mount.

From the last chapter, Chapter Ten, “Jesus Declares His Identity”, we have an excerpt from a section called “The Son of Man”:

Let us turn now to the scriptural passages themselves. We saw that the first group of sayings about the Son of Man refers to his future coming. Most of these occur in Jesus’ discourse about the end of the world (cf. Mk 13:24-27) and in his trial before the Sanhedrin (cf. Mk 14:62). Discussion of them therefore belongs in the second volume of this book. There is just one important point that I would like to make here: They are sayings about Jesus’ future glory, about his coming to judge and to gather the righteous, the “elect.” We must not overlook, however, that they are spoken by a man who stands before his judges, accused and mocked: In these very words glory and the Passion are inextricably intertwined.

Admittedly, they do not expressly mention the Passion, but that is the reality in which Jesus finds himself and in which he is speaking. We encounter this connection in a uniquely concentrated form in the parable about the Last Judgment recounted in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-46), in which the Son of Man, in the role of judge, identifies himself with those who hunger and thirst, with the strangers, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned–with all those who suffer in this world–and he describes behavior toward them as behavior toward himself. This is no mere fiction about the judge of the world, invented after the Resurrection. In becoming incarnate, he accomplished this identification with the utmost literalism. He is the man without property or home who has no place to lay his head (cf. Mt 8:19; Lk 9:58). He is the prisoner, the accused, and he dies naked on the Cross. The identification of the Son of Man who judges the world with those who suffer in every way presupposes the judge’s identity with the earthly Jesus and reveals the inner unity of Cross and glory, of earthly existence in lowliness and future authority to judge the world. The Son of Man is one person alone, and that person is Jesus. This identity shows us the way, shows us the criterion according to which our lives will one day be judged.

– pp. 327-328

Not everything in this volume is as readable as the passage above, but the entire thing is worth the challenge.

This is not the sort of book I would normally choose for myself. It was given to me by somebody close to me and I am glad I finally read it–and wish I had read it sooner. In fact this book was exactly what I needed to read, and by the providence of God, my delay in reading it turned out to make for just about the perfect timing for having the greatest impact. (Sorry to be so vague, but this gets more personal than I am prepared to share in this sort of forum.)

So, with all that, I can highly recommend this book to anyone needing a little (or a lot of) inspiration to persevere in the midst of troubles.

This book uses the story of Joseph from the Old Testament (he of the coat of many colors) to show how we should trust in God, even when those closest to us turn on us. The chapters include overcoming treachery, temptation, disappointment, success, and bitterness. The author does a great job of showing how Joseph wasn’t altogether blameless and needed to develop humility–and that these experiences were tailor-made to help him do just that, as long as he trusted that God had a plan for him–a plan that was ultimately good, no matter how it might seem at any of the several low points along the way.

As it turns out, this entire little pocket-sized book is online, so here is the link to it (the original 80 pages reformatted to 32). Personally, I liked reading the actual hard-copy book during breaks in a day filled with appointments and errands, better than I would have on my phone.

I understand and acknowledge that poetry is a little off the beaten track of expectations for recommended spiritual reading, but this is not typical poetry. It reads like a meditation, and in some parts, almost like scripture, or at least sermon. Eliot was a deeply spiritual man and struggled greatly to make sense of some of the tragic aspects of his life, one being the descent into insanity of his first wife, another being the realization of a love that could never be consummated. (Happily, he ultimately found love with somebody completely devoted to him, yet since it happened when he was relatively advanced in age, it too had an element of tragedy in that it was all too short.)

The Four Quartets is actually a series of four long poems consisting of Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, which were originally released gradually, one at a time. If you pay attention, you will see things that hearken to St. John of the Cross, such as references to the “darkness of God” in part III of East Coker:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

– pp. 27-29

Here also is part IV of East Coker:

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

– pp. 29-30

Here is another astounding passage from section V of The Dry Salvages:

This is a great little no-nonsense book by Merton. Check out how he clears up a common misconception about spiritual direction:

This [previous] description of spiritual direction brings out certain important differences between direction and counselling, or direction and psychotherapy. Spiritual direction is not merely the cumulative effect of encouragements and admonitions which we all need in order to live up to our state in life. It is not mere ethical, social or psychological guidance. It is spiritual.

But it is important for us to understand what this word “spiritual” means here. There is a temptation to think that spiritual direction is the guidance of one’s spiritual activities, considered a small part or department of one’s life. You go to a spiritual director to have him take care of your spirit, the way you go to a dentist to have him take care of your teeth, or to a barber to get a haircut. This is completely false. The spiritual director is concerned with the whole person, for the spiritual life is not just the life of the mind, or of the affections, or of the “summit of the soul” — it is the life of the whole person. For the spiritual man (pneumatikos) is one whose whole life, in all its aspects and all its activities, has been spiritualized by the action of the Holy Spirit, whether through the sacraments or by personal and interior inspirations. Moreover, spiritual direction is concerned with the whole person not simply as an individual human being, but as a son of God, another Christ, seeking to recover the perfect likeness to God in Christ, and by the Spirit of Christ.

– pp. 14-15

His insights on meditation and mental prayer are even more penetrating:

The Sense of Indigence

In order to make a serious and fruitful meditation we must enter into our prayer with a real sense of our need for these fruits. It is not enough to apply our minds to spiritual things in the same way as we might observe some natural phenomenon, or conduct a scientific experiment. In mental prayer we enter a realm of which we are no longer the masters and we propose to ourselves the consideration of truths which exceed our natural comprehension and which, nevertheless, contain the secret of our destiny. We seek to enter more deeply into the life of God. But God is infinitely above us, although He is within us and is the principle of our being. The grace of close union with Him, although it is something we can obtain by prayer and good works, remains nevertheless His gift to us.

One who begs an alms must adopt a different attitude from one who demands what is due to him by his own right. A meditation that is no more than a dispassionate study of spiritual truths indicates no desire, on our part, to share more fully in the spiritual benefits which are the fruit of prayer. We have to enter into our meditation with a realization of our spiritual poverty, our complete lack of the things we seek, and of our abject nothingness in the sight of the infinite God.

– pp. 79-80

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/spiritual-direction-meditation/feed/1Spiritual_directionunwobblingpivotThe Collected Works of St. John of the Crosshttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/the-collected-works-of-st-john-of-the-cross/
https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/the-collected-works-of-st-john-of-the-cross/#commentsWed, 09 Apr 2014 05:57:06 +0000http://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/?p=576Continue reading The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross→]]>The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (primarily The Dark Night)

by St. John of the Cross (1585: The Dark Night commentary is completed)

The Dark Night (or as it is oftentimes called “The Dark Night of the Soul“) is the best known of the writings of St. John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite priest who was a contemporary of St. Teresa of Avila.

The Dark Night would most likely be the main attraction of a volume of his collected works, as it was for me. But there are three other major works that are also quite worthwhile: The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Spiritual Canticle, and The Living Flame of Love. All four are based off of the same general pattern. First there is a poem of some length, broken into stanzas, usually five lines each. Then what follows is a commentary that takes one stanza at a time and shows how these stanzas, by design, apply to the spiritual principles St. John is trying to illuminate for us.

Like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross is not easy reading. Therefore, like I did for The Interior Castle, I once again strongly advise the reading of Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Fire Within beforehand.

As it turns out for me, I found myself liking The Living Flame of Love as much if not more than The Dark Night.

As John is such a superior and gifted writer and theologian, let’s share some excerpts.

First, from The Ascent of Mount Carmel, we have a passage that could serve as a summary of God Wants You Happy by Father Jonathan Morris. It comes from Book Two, Chapter 6, section 1 (which covers the second stanza):

The theological virtues perfect the faculties of the soul and produce emptiness and darkness in them.

1. We must discuss the method of leading the three faculties (intellect, memory, and will) into this spiritual night, the means to divine union. But we must first explain how the theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity (related to those faculties as their proper supernatural objects), through which the soul is united with God, cause the same emptiness and darkness in their respective faculties: faith in the intellect, hope in the memory, and charity in the will. Then we shall explain how in order to journey to God the intellect must be perfected in the darkness of faith, the memory in the emptiness of hope, and the will in the nakedness and absence of every affection.

As a result it will be seen how necessary it is for the soul, if it is to walk securely, to journey through this dark night with the support of these three virtues. They darken and empty it of all things. As we said, the soul is not united with God in this life through understanding, or through enjoyment, or through imagination, or through any other sense; but only faith, hope, and charity (according to the intellect, memory, and will) can unite the soul with God in this life.

– pg. 166

Next, from The Dark Night, we have another concentrated dose which comes from Book Two, Chapter 11, section 3:

3. This happens very particularly in this dark purgation, as was said, since God so weans and recollects the appetites that they cannot find satisfaction in any of their objects. God proceeds thus so that by both withdrawing the appetites from other objects and recollecting them in himself, he strengthens the soul and gives it the capacity for this strong union of love, which he begins to accord by means of this purgation. In this union the soul loves God intensely with all its strength and all its sensory and spiritual appetites. Such love is impossible if these appetites are scattered by their satisfaction in other things. In order to receive the strength of this union of love, David exclaimed to God: I will keep my strength for you [Ps. 59:9], that is, all the ability, appetites, and strength of my faculties, by not desiring to make use of them or find satisfaction in anything outside of you.

– pg. 420

And finally, from The Living Flame of Love, the commentary on Stanza 1, section 24:

24. Not many people undergo so strong a purgation, only those whom God wishes to elevate to the highest degree of union. For he prepares individuals by a purification more or less severe in accordance with the degree to which he wishes to raise them, and also according to their impurity and imperfection.

This suffering resembles that of purgatory. Just as the spirits suffer purgation there so as to be able to see God through a clear vision in the next life, souls in their own way suffer purgation here on earth so as to be able to be transformed in him through love in this life.

This work of imaginative fiction is a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to Wormwood his fledgling nephew with advice on how to win the soul of the human (the “patient”) that has been assigned to him.

Here is a brief excerpt from letter number 14 to give you the flavor:

My dear Wormwood,

The most alarming thing in your last account of the patient is that he is making none of those confident resolutions which marked his original conversion. No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue, I gather; not even the expectation of an endowment of ‘grace’ for life, but only a hope for the daily and hourly pittance to meet the daily and hourly temptation! This is very bad.

I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, ‘By jove! I’m being humble’, and almost immediately pride–pride at his own humility–will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt–and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed. …

Much like Seeking Spiritual Direction, also by Fr. Dubay, this book’s best part is the question and answer portion toward the end. The answers are reassuring and not at all intimidating. Consider the exchange on distractions in Chapter 15, “Problems and Pitfalls”:

3. “I am often pestered with distractions at prayer. I really do not want them, but is there anything I can do to get rid of them? I try but don’t much succeed.”

The first thing you can do is be at peace. As long as distractions are not deliberate or intentional, they do much less harm than you think. If you sincerely want to pray, and you try reasonably well, you are praying.

– pg. 149

Other highlights are a chapter dedicated to the “Liturgy of the Hours”, and the final two chapters, “Assessing Progress” and “Growing in Depth”.

I would not recommend reading this book — even a study edition — without first having been prepped by Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Fire Within. If you are wrestling with trying to locate yourself within the landscape of the spiritual journey, Teresa of Avila will help shed some light, but I will warn that reading her raised as many questions as answers for me. This is not all bad: we are talking about an extremely transcendent subject, so anything less would not be nearly as interesting, and even captivating and engrossing.

Her basic model is of a castle with seven chambers, each of which represents a major stage within the soul’s spiritual journey inward. The first three are fairly basic, but the fourth is clearly a departure, in which the beginnings of contemplative prayer are discovered. Five, and especially six and seven, are described in ways that are full of vivid imagery and indications of exceptional phenomena, though I have come to understand that these are not necessarily essential.

If you are going to explore deeply the mystical aspects of the spiritual life, you will not want to omit St. Teresa. Just go in prepared.

This book ranks only behind the bible itself historically in terms of readership and influence. Even closer to our own times, it is said that Pope John Paul I was found on his deathbed with this book upon his chest, suggesting he was reading it right before he died.

Written by a monk for monks, it soon became wildly popular with the masses, and even more so with the development of the printing press. Originally written in Latin by a German (in an area that is present-day Netherlands), the first English translation appeared in the following century.

I must confess that I used to read this book a lot when I was young, but not as much lately. On the occasions that I do pick it up, I am quickly reminded why I liked it so much in the first place. And with the increased reading of mystical writers I have been doing lately (as opposed to more theological, catechetical, or apologetic writings), it has been dawning on me that The Imitation has had a wider influence than I ever realized.

From Book I (of four), “Admonitions Useful for a Spiritual Life”, which has 25 sections:

16. Of Bearing Other Men’s Faults

Such faults as we cannot amend in ourselves or in others we must patiently suffer until our Lord of His goodness will dispose otherwise. And we shall think that perhaps it is best for the testing of our patience, without which our merits are but little to be considered. Nevertheless, you shall pray heartily that our Lord, of His great mercy and goodness, may vouchsafe to help us to bear such burdens patiently.

If you admonish any person once or twice, and he will not accept it, do not strive too much with him, but commit all to God, that His will may be done, and His honor acknowledged in all His servants, for by His goodness He can well turn evil into good. Study always to be patient in bearing other men’s defects, for you have many in yourself that others suffer from you, and if you cannot make yourself be as you would, how may you then look to have another regulated in all things to suit your will?

We would gladly have others perfect, yet we will not amend our own faults. We desire others to be strictly corrected for their offenses, yet we will not be corrected. We dislike it that others have liberty, yet we will not be denied what we ask. We desire that others should be restrained according to the laws, yet we will in no way be restrained. And so it appears evident that we seldom judge our neighbors as we do ourselves.

If all men were perfect, what would we then have to put up with in our neighbors, for God’s sake? Therefore, God has so ordained that each one of us shall learn to bear another’s burden, for in this world no man is without fault, no man without burden, no man sufficient to himself, and no man wise enough of himself. And so it behooves each one of us to bear the burden of others, to comfort others, to help others, to counsel others, and to instruct and admonish others in all charity. The time of adversity shows who is of most virtue. Occasions do not make a man frail, but they do show openly what he is.

– pp. 49-50

A word of caution: extensive reading of this work will expand your vocabulary to include words like “vouchsafe” and”behoove”, which might be “superfluous” additions. What you make of that is up to you.

John Paul II will be canonized on April 27, 2014 — just inside four weeks from now. Now might be a good time to pick this one up and read, or reread it.

This was intended originally to be an in-person broadcast interview, but because of the Pope’s busy travel schedule, it had to be cancelled. But the interviewer-to-be, Vittorio Messori, had sent John Paul the list of questions beforehand. The Pope thought they were good questions, worthy of thoughtful answers, so he developed answers to them in his spare moments, sending them back through his secretary, with a suggested title, which Messori kept.

Thus this book came to be. It is a bit of a one of a kind work. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (and later as Pope Benedict VXI) sat for similar book length interviews, but this one was done in isolation — a virtual interview of sorts, that reads more like a live chat might today. If the person live-chatting was the visible head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Here are a couple segments from early in the book. First, from “Praying: How and Why” (all emphasis original):

One can and must pray in many different ways, as the Bible teaches through a multitude of examples. The Book of Psalms is irreplaceable. We must pray with “inexpressible groanings” in order to enter into rhythm with the Spirit’s own entreaties. To obtain forgiveness one must implore, becoming part of the loud cries of Christ the Redeemer (cf. Heb 5:7). Through all of this one must proclaim glory. Prayer is always an opus gloriae (a work, a labor, of glory). Man is the priest of all creation. Christ conferred upon him this dignity and vocation. Creation completes its opus gloriae both by being what it is and by its duty to become what should be.

In a certain sense science and technology also contribute to this goal. But at the same time, since they are human works, they can lead away from this goal. In our civilization in particular there is such a risk, making it difficult for our civilization to be one of life and love. Missing is precisely the opus gloriae, which is the fundamental destiny of every creature, and above all of man, who was created in order to become, in Christ, the priest, prophet, and king of all earthly creatures.

Much has been written about prayer, and further, prayer has been widely experienced in the history of humankind, especially in the history of Israel and Christianity. Man achieves the fullness of prayer not when he expresses himself, but when he lets God be most fully present in prayer. The history of mystical prayer in the East and West attests to this: Saint Francis, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and, in the East, for example, Saint Serafim of Sarov and many others.

-pp. 16-17

The second excerpt is from ‘What Does “To Save” Mean?’:

Christianity is a religion of salvation. The salvation in question is that of the Cross and the Resurrection. God, who desires that man “may live” (cf. Ez 18:23), draws near to him through the death of His Son in order to reveal that life to which he is called in God Himself. Everyone who looks for salvation, not only the Christian, must stop before the Cross of Christ.

Will he be willing to accept the truth of the Paschal Mystery, or not? Will he have faith? This is yet another issue. This Mystery of salvation is an event which has already taken place. God has embraced all men by the Cross and the Resurrection of His Son. God embraces all men with the life which was revealed in the Cross and in the Resurrection, and which is constantly being born anew from them. As indicated by the allegory of “the vine” and “the branches” in the Gospel of John (cf. Jn 15:1-8), the Paschal Mystery is by now grafted onto the history of humanity, onto the history of every individual.

-pp. 70-71

In some ways, the theme of hope found in these pages seems to have made its way into Benedict’s encyclical Saved in Hope.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/crossing-the-threshold-of-hope/feed/1Crossing_the_threshold_of_hopeunwobblingpivotThe Wisdom of the Deserthttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/the-wisdom-of-the-desert/
https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/the-wisdom-of-the-desert/#commentsSat, 29 Mar 2014 17:51:21 +0000http://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/?p=480Continue reading The Wisdom of the Desert→]]>The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century

(translated) by Thomas Merton (1960)

The back cover says:

“The Wisdom of the Desert was one of Thomas Merton’s favorites among his own books — surely because he had hoped to spend his last years as a hermit. The personal tone of the translations, the blend of reverence and humor so characteristic of him, show how deeply Merton identified with the legendary authors of these sayings and parables, the fourth-century Christian Fathers who sought solitude and contemplation in the deserts of the Near East.”

The humor is evident, as you will see in later quotes, but let’s first view the Author’s Note:

This collection of sayings from the Verba Seniorum is by no means intended as a piece of research scholarship. It is, on the contrary. a free and informal redaction of stories chosen here and there in the various original Latin versions, without order and without any identification of the particular sources. The book is designed entirely for the reader’s interest and edification. In other words I have felt that as a monk of the twentieth century I ought to be quite free in availing myself of the privilege enjoyed by the monks of earlier days, and so I have made a little collection of my own, with no special system, order or purpose, merely in order to have the stories and to enjoy them with my friends. This is the way such books originally came into existence.

When the first version of this work was completed, I gave it to my friend Victor Hammer who printed an extraordinarily beautiful limited edition on his hand press in Lexington. Kentucky. After that, it was decided to expand the collection a little, and rewrite the introduction, so that New Directions could bring out a larger edition. So here it is. But I hope the book still preserves its original spontaneous, informal and personal aspect. Far from detracting from their wisdom, this informality will guarantee the stories the authenticity they have always had and keep them fresh and alive in all their concreteness and immediacy. May those who need and enjoy such apothegms be encouraged, by the taste of clear water, to follow the brook to its source.

– pg. ix

The first page of the book proper is a real grabber, these prefatory remarks extending on for nearly 25 pages:

In the fourth century A. D. the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia were peopled by a race of men who have left behind them a strange reputation. They were the first Christian hermits, who abandoned the cities of the pagan world to live in solitude. Why did they do this? The reasons were many and various, but they can all be summed up in one word as the quest for “salvation.” And what was salvation? Certainly it was not something they sought in mere exterior conformity to the customs and dictates of any social group. In those days men had become keenly conscious of the strictly individual character of “salvation.” Society – which meant pagan society, limited by the horizons and prospects of life “in this world” – was regarded by them as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life. We need not stop here to discuss the fairness of this view: what matters is to remember that it was a fact. These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster. The fact that the Emperor was now Christian and that the “world” was coming to know the Cross as a sign of temporal power only strengthened them in their resolve.

It should seem to us much stranger than it does, this paradoxical flight from the world that attained its greatest dimensions (I almost said frenzy) when the “world” became officially Christian.

– pp. 3-4

And then come 150 translated sayings (averaging about three per page), matching in number the Psalms. Here are some samples:

* XXXVIII *

Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher who was commanded by his Master for three years to give money to everyone who insulted him. When this period of trial was over, the Master said to him: Now you can go to Athens and learn wisdom. When the disciple was entering Athens he met a certain wise man who sat at the gate insulting everybody who came and went. He also insulted the disciple who immediately burst out laughing. Why do you laugh when I insult you? said the wise man. Because, said the disciple, for three years I have been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing. Enter the city, said the wise man, it is all yours. Abbot John used to tell the above story, saying: This is the door of God by which our fathers rejoicing in many tribulations enter into the City of Heaven.

* LXXXVI *

To one of the brethren appeared a devil, transformed into an angel of light, who said to him: I am the Angel Gabriel, and I have been sent to thee. But the brother said: Think again — you must have been sent to somebody else. I haven’t done anything to deserve an angel. Immediately the devil ceased to appear.

* CXLI *

Once two brethren came to a certain elder whose custom it was not to eat every day. But when he saw the brethren he invited them with joy to dine with him, saying: Fasting has its reward, but he who eats out of charity fulfils two commandments, for he sets aside his own will and he refreshes his hungry brethren.

* CXLIV *

A certain brother asked Abbot Pambo: Why do the devils prevent me from doing good to my neighbour? And the elder said to him: Don’t talk like that. Is God a liar? Why don’t you just admit that you do not want to be merciful? Didn’t God say long ago: I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and on all forces of the enemy? So why do you not stamp down the evil spirit?

In this book, Fr. Dubay attempts to map out a way for people to discern truth from error, in groups and alone. As always, he uses the gospel and the Church as his guides, so he is reliable and worthy of the reader’s trust. This book is his least informal and most academic of the ones I have read by him. It is a deceptively strong work. Appearing to be dry, long, dense, and pedantic, it turns out to be none of those. I found it to be extremely lucid, practical, insightful, and vibrant. And worthy of at least one additional reading.

It would probably require more than one excerpt to demonstrate the appeal of this book, but let one lengthy citation suffice. The book has four large divisions, the first of which is “Concepts and Problems”. Chapter 3 is “How Does God Speak?” and here are two sections from that chapter:

Experience of God: A Privilege

When we reflect on the endless gap between inﬁnite and finite, we glimpse at least vaguely how remarkable it is that man should encounter God, should experience something of how he experiences himself, should be able somehow to detect his mind in this encounter. Since discernment does at least in its loftier occurrences imply this experience of God, we ought not to assume that the classical feeling of peace is humanly produced. If perfect discernment demands perfect holiness, it demands what we have been talking about. A deep contact with God bestows a deep perception of his mind. How sublime this contact may be we may illustrate with a few snatches from a single page ﬂowing from the pen of a mystic: “This loving inﬂow. . . this inflaming and urgent longing of love. . . something immensely rich and delightful . . . this divine ﬁre . . . a living ﬂame . . . this enkindling of love . . . a certain touch of divinity . . . so sublime an experience.”

In the sobering remarks I shall be making about the likelihood of illusion among many who feel they are listening to the Spirit, I should not want the impression to be given that genuine experience of God is extraordinary, a thing not to be talked about. Quite the contrary, experiencing the divine is so important that we seek to receive it, yes, but we also wish to deﬂect counterfeits from it. Since it is the same John of the Cross who will furnish us with strong warnings about deception, we may also allow him to assure us at this point that there do indeed exist remarkable experiences of God indwelling.

Noting that we are called to delight in God in a manner transcending all knowledge and capacity to explain, John issues the invitation: “Come, then, O beautiful soul! Since you know now that your desired Beloved lives hidden within your heart, strive to be really hidden with Him, and you will embrace Him within you and experience Him with loving affection.” In this union, says the saint, one experiences a great closeness to God and is instructed in his own wisdom and mysteries. The saint uses all sorts of expressions to articulate some little of what he means: “secret touches of love . . . cauterized by the fire of love . . . it burns up in this ﬂame and fire of love . . .wholly renews it. . .changes its manner of being”. He speaks of a “touch of supreme knowledge of the divinity” that cannot be continual or prolonged, for if it were, the person would die. As it is, one “is left dying of love”. John feels that so lofty is this experience that only he who has had it can understand it well, and even the recipient cannot explain what he has felt, and so he calls it an “l-don’t-know-what”.

Authenticity of the Experience of God

We are going to consider in our next chapter illusions and errors as both possible and probable in alleged discerning of the Holy Spirit. We shall likewise devote still other chapters to the revealed signs of who is led by the Spirit and who is not. Nonetheless, we may make several needed observations at this point. And the first is to note how an experience of God may be distinguished from mere emotion. There are several differences. First of all, an emotion originates in some human or ﬁnite cause, whereas the experience of God does not. The latter is divinely given and lies beyond the control of the human person (though he can prevent it by neglect or sin). Secondly, the one is heavily of sense, while the other is spiritual, even though the latter can overﬂow into one’s feelings. Thirdly, an emotion never becomes continual, whereas the perception of God does become continual when one has grown fully in him. Fourthly, even the best of emotions do not necessarily produce a new knowledge of God or insight into his economy, while a genuine encounter with him does. Fifthly, emotions are usually neither indelible nor ineffable, while deep experiences of the divine are often both. Sixthly, emotions are not always peaceful, whereas meetings with God carry an inner calm with them. Lastly, emotions are not necessarily accompanied by moral goodness, while experiences of God do bring a growth in gospel living.

It will be interesting to note that what we are saying here will be said in biblical thought patterns when further on we study the signs of authentic discernment. Not everyone who thinks he is feeling the Spirit is feeling the Spirit.

The question may then be asked whether one can have a founded certitude that he has met God. Catholic teaching excludes an absolute certainty (unless one has a revelation) of one’s being in grace and of final salvation. Scripture tells us that we are to work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Phil 2:12) and that we are to hold on to the grace we have received in reverence and awe (Heb 12:28). The person who considers himself safe should beware lest he fall (1 Cor 10:12). Yet at the same time theology does allow for a reasonable assurance that one possesses the indwelling presence. What I am calling a reasonable assurance others term a moral certainty or a practical certitude.

How then do we explain the mystic’s certainty that God dwells within him and that he has really encountered this God? One answer given is that a deep experience of God can be equivalent to a revelation and thus can yield an absolute certitude. Another response is that the experience does not yield absolute certitude but only the well-founded reasonable assurance, the moral certitude that excludes reasonable doubts.

– pp. 74-77

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/authenticity/feed/1AuthenticityunwobblingpivotTreatise on the Love of Godhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/treatise-on-the-love-of-god/
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by St. Francis de Sales (1616; contemporary English edition, 2011)

Francis was the Bishop of Geneva and made it his life’s work to try to win back Catholics lost to the Protestant Reformation. He was hugely successful. St. Francis de Sales is known more for his earlier work, Introduction to the Devout Life, which he addressed to “Philothea”, as a stand-in for the soul (though it was written as a series of correspondence to an actual lady). This work is addressed to “Theotimus”, due to some objections by men that they did not want to take advice addressed to a woman. De Sales decided to give equal time, though I suspect he would have preferred to keep the addressee feminine had there been no objections to the first book. It obviously bothered him at least a little, as he goes on about it in the preface. In the end, it turns out to be a minor thing. The end result is a great book. Or actually twelve books.

This is a modern abridged version that takes twelve books down to twelve chapters. Since this work, like The Cloud of Unknowing, is referenced by many other writers, it seemed like one with which I should familiarize myself.

I offer two excerpts from this one. First, from Chapter 6, “Contemplation and Meditation–Love in Prayer”:

This makes contemplation quite different than meditation, which nearly always takes a lot of effort on our part. Meditation is like eating. It is necessary to chew, turning spiritual meat this way and that between the teeth of consideration. Working on it, we grind it up to make it digestible. Contemplation is like drinking. There is no protracted labor by our teeth. We calmly swallow our drink with pleasure. There is even the possibility of sacred drunkenness. We can contemplate frequently and ardently enough to be completely out of ourselves and totally in God. This is quite different from inebriation of the flesh. It does not make us dull and stupid. Instead of lowering us to the level of animals, it lifts us to the level of angels. It allows us to live more in God than in ourselves.

To arrive at contemplation, we must hear the word of God, confer with others on spiritual matters, read, pray, sing, and conceive worthy thoughts.

– pg. 52

And from Chapter 11, “The Love of God Inspires Other Virtues”, in a section titled, “Fruit of the Spirit”:

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galations 5:22-23). Notice, Theotimus, that when Paul lists the various qualities of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, he counts them as one single fruit. He does not begin with the plural, “fruits.” He uses the singular. This is why: “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5). Love is the only fruit of the Holy Spirit. This one fruit has an infinite number of excellent properties. Paul mentions a few of them as examples. When we state that the fruit of the vine is grapes, wine, brandy, the drink “to gladden the human heart” (Psalm 104:15 NRSV), the beverage that settles the stomach [1 Timothy 5:23], we do not mean all these different things grow on the vine. There is only one fruit, yet it has many different qualities depending on how it is used.

Paul simply means that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. This love can be joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, and gentle, and it can improve self-control. Divine love prompts all these things and more.

Love is the life of the spirit.

– pg. 127

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/treatise-on-the-love-of-god/feed/1treatise-on-the-love-of-god-4unwobblingpivotThe Science of the Crosshttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-science-of-the-cross/
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by Edith Stein (1983; original delayed publication in 1950; written 1942)

Edith Stein (a.k.a. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) wrote this shortly before she was taken to her death by the Nazis. She was a brilliant philosopher before she converted from atheism to Catholicism almost overnight, when she read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila while staying at a friend’s home one night. The keen intellect of this Carmelite nun is on display in this work, which is no easy read, but not impossible. She takes the reader through the writings of John of the Cross, quoting him liberally, but doing it in an organized sequence, elucidating much that would escape the casual uninitiated reader of St. John.

Here is a substantial excerpt from Chapter 6, “Purgation through Hope”:

The perfect purgation of the soul is received passively from God. All the soul has to do is prepare herself to receive it: whatever the senses present “must not be stored in the memory…but she must leave them immediately and forget them, and put as much effort into this as one would to remember other things. No image of remembrance should remain in the memory, as though these things had never existed. The memory should be left completely free and unhindered, and one must not seek to engage it in any meditation on heavenly or terrestrial things. . . . One should leave . . . these things and remain forgetful of them, counting them but a hindrance on the way.”

A spiritual person, on the contrary, who “still wishes to make use of natural knowledge and discursive reflection of the memory in the journey to God” will experience three kinds of harm. She will suffer from manifold miseries concerning things of the world, “for instance, falsehoods, imperfections, appetites, inclinations to criticize, waste of time, etc. . . . ” If one allows the memory to occupy itself with what has been perceived through the senses, one falls “into imperfections step by step. For some emotion will cling to these sensory objects, now of sorrow and fear, soon of hate and vain hopes of vainglory, which will remain in the soul. . . . all things that hinder the perfect purity of the soul and perfect union with God. . . . These imperfections are better overcome all at once through complete denial of the memory.” It is best “to learn to silence and quiet the faculties of the soul so that God may speak to her.” Then “a river of peace will descend on her . . . and . . . in this peace, God will remove all the misgivings, suspicions, disturbances, and darknesses which awakened in her the fear that she is already lost or is near to being lost.”

Further harm comes from the intervention of the devil. He “can add to the soul’s knowledge new impressions, ideas, and reasonings, and by means of them move her to pride, avarice, anger, envy, and so on, and thus seduce her to unjust hatred and vain love . . . By far, most of the great delusions and evils that the devil causes in the soul spring from the knowledge and thought processes of the memory. When therefore, this faculty is shrouded in the complete darkness of forgetfulness and its activity is halted, the gates remain locked against the diabolical influence . . . and this leads to great blessings for the soul.”

The third kind of harm to the soul consists in this: the natural content of the memory can be “an impediment to moral good and deprive one of spiritual good.” The moral good “consists in bridling the passions and curbing the inordinate appetites, and then in the soul’s resulting tranquility and peace, as well as in the moral virtues engendered in her.”

All confusion and disturbance in the soul is caused by the contents of the memory. The soul that lives in restlessness, and that gets no support from moral good, is “incapable of receiving any spiritual good, for the spiritual good can abide only in an even-tempered and peaceful soul.” Should the soul value the contents of the memory and turn to them, “it is impossible for her to be free to receive the Incomprehensible, Who is God.” If she wishes to go to God, she must “replace the mutable and comprehensible by the Immutable and Incomprehensible.”

Then in place of the harm so far described, the soul will gain the opposite advantages: rest and peace of spirit, purity of conscience and of soul, and therewith the best preparation “for the reception of human and divine wisdom and virtues.” She is preserved from many suggestions, temptations, and disturbances caused by the evil enemy, for whom those thoughts provided a handhold. The soul becomes receptive for the motivation by and inspirations of the Holy Spirit.”

– pp. 82-84

(NOTE: The soul is referred to in the feminine pronouns, but only in the same way that ships are, not because the author is female–in fact, most of these references are from John of the Cross–but only because all creatures, and indeed creation itself, are seen as feminine in relation to the Creator.)

If you are interested in a well done movie on the the life of Edith Stein, The Seventh Chamber, starring Maia Morgenstern (who played the mother of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ), is a worthwhile film. It is in Italian with English subtitles.

This book was published prior to Vatican II, 15 years before Deacon Enzler would be ordained. It is written in an encouraging and intimate style, as a series of instructions from Jesus. It is not unlike The Imitation of Christ.

The main thrust of the book is for us not to see ourselves as another Christ, but to see ourselves as becoming Christ’s other self. It is not a distinction without a difference, which the book does an effective job of showing. There is no danger here of walking away with any sort of messiah complex in the least. Becoming Christ’s other self is just another way of expressing the process of sanctification.

The following quotation is from the section “Motives for Trust” in Chapter Two, “Abandonment”:

Abandon your will to mine, and all that happens must speed you along the path to happiness, to holiness, to sainthood. Under my loving care, nothing can harm you. Whatever happens to you by my will is so good that the angels of heaven themselves could not conceive of anything better.

Cling to me with all your heart, with all your will, and I will make you a saint. Nothing shall separate you from my love: neither death nor life, angels nor devils, neither things present nor to come. No force or creature in heaven or hell can separate my love from you if you do my will.

Trust in me; I will always protect you. Seek my will in all things. Your greatest good is that my will shall be done.

If you generously renounce your own will to seek only my good pleasure, my divine Heart will illumine you with a vivid light to know my wishes. I will show you what you must do and work within you to help you accomplish it.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/my-other-self/feed/1My_other_selfunwobblingpivotHeaven in Our Hands: Living the Beatitudeshttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/heaven-in-our-hands/
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by Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R. (1994)

The primary value of this book is that it gives a modern take on what St. Augustine had (unknown to me) already offered as the pairings of each of the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit with each of the eight Beatitudes. It is a very down to earth yet effective book.

Fr. Groeschel assigns each pairing to one of the ascending stages of the spiritual journey: Purgative, Illuminative, and Unitive. These divisions go back to the early days of Christian thought: St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine, among others.

Here is a solid excerpt from early in the book, as the author is getting warmed up. It is from Chapter 2, “Written on Our Hearts”, in a sections called “The Law of the Spirit of Life”:

Why this concern about the gifts of the Holy Spirit? The fact is that we cannot successfully continue or even begin to live the life of the Beatitudes unless we are lifted up “on eagles’ wings” (Ex 19:4) through the improvement of these spiritual gifts. Many people–including clergy and religious–spend a considerable amount of energy on Christian activities such as prayer and good works, yet don’t appear to have a clue as to their ultimate goal, the final destination of their spiritual journey. Even the concept of a spiritual journey often escapes their notice.

Scripture tells us that the gospel abrogated the law given to Moses, and that we follow “the law of the Spirit of life” (Rom 8:2). But if you were to ask most people where this law of the Spirit of life is to be found or what it entails, they would be hard pressed to tell you.

Some would guess that the law of the Spirit of life means the Sermon on the Mount, or the whole gospel, or all the teachings included in the sacred tradition of the Church and the apostolic teaching. And in fact, all of these sources represent the external, visible, comprehensible, even printable law, if you will. This visible law guides us and is called the law of Christ. But the Fathers of the Church, in an all-but-forgotten teaching, maintain that the “law of the Spirit of life” is written on the heart (or inner being) of the devout follower of Christ.

St. Paul clearly describes the true location of this law: “you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor 3:3). In Galatians we are told to “walk by the Spirit,” and that if we are led by the Spirit, we are “not under the law” (Gal 5:16-18).

St. John Chrysostom in several sermons speaks of the new law as the Holy Spirit himself. St. Augustine wrote an entire treatise, “De Spiritu et Littera,” where we find the following summary on this important and little-known doctrine: “What else are the laws of God himself poured into our hearts than the presence itself of the Holy Spirit? By his presence love is poured out into our hearts which is the fullness of the law.”

The ultimate location of God’s law is in the heart (or in the center of being) of the individual believer. This teaching has not been popular because it can be misunderstood easily and lead to moral subjectivism. Yet the Holy Spirit can’t write one moral law onto my heart and another one onto yours. We obviously need the “external” moral teaching of Scripture and tradition to keep us from sinking into a quagmire of confusion. At the same time we must remember that this law is inscribed on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

– pp. 44-45

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/heaven-in-our-hands/feed/1Heaven_in_our_handsunwobblingpivotSeeking Spiritual Direction: How to Grow the Divine Life Withinhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/seeking-spiritual-direction/
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by Thomas Dubay, S.M. (1993)

Of this there is no doubt: this book is written by an expert in the subject. That makes it money and time well spent immediately.

The vast majority of the book (the final two-thirds) is written in a question and answer format, which works surprisingly well. At times the back and forth seems contrived and stiff, but luckily that is not pervasive. On occasion, the flow seems so natural that maybe it is indeed a real interview or conversation.

This work may be the most practical spiritual book I have read. It truly is a no nonsense book. The advice on how to find and discern a suitable spiritual director is invaluable. The pitfalls Fr. Dubay makes you aware of are things that are better not learned by experience if you can avoid it.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/seeking-spiritual-direction/feed/3Seeking_spiritual_directionunwobblingpivotThe Spirit of the Liturgyhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/the-spirit-of-the-liturgy/
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by Pope Benedict XVI, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (2000)

This book is where Cardinal Ratzinger suggests what you may have seen at some churches: the altar with a crucifix facing the priest. Some have dubbed it the “Benedict arrangement” or some such terminology. It’s an interesting proposal.

Beyond getting into some of the trickier theological questions about the liturgical changes since Vatican II, this book is written in a spiritual prayerful style compared to a lot of Ratzinger’s other theological output. It is definitely worth a read if you are interested in getting deeper into the liturgy as well as understanding some of the differing approaches that various people are in favor of or against.

While the sections on Sacred Space and Sacred Time are particularly strong, they are too long to quote. Instead, here is something from the first chapter, “The Question of Images”, of Part Three, “Art and Liturgy”:

The icon of Christ is the icon of the risen Lord. That truth, with all its implications, now dawned on the Christian mind. There is no portrait of the risen Lord. At first the disciples do not recognize him. They have to be led toward a new kind of seeing, in which their eyes are gradually opened from within to the point where they recognize him afresh and cry out: “It is the Lord!” Perhaps the most telling episode of all is that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Their hearts are transformed, so that, through the outward events of Scripture, they can discern its inward center, from which everything comes and to which everything tends: the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They then detain their mysterious companion and give him their hospitality, and at the breaking of bread they experience in reverse fashion what happened to Adam and Eve when they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: their eyes are opened. Now they no longer see just the externals but the reality that is not apparent through their senses: it is the Lord, now alive in a new way. In the icon it is not the facial features that count (though icons essentially adhere to the appearance of the acheiropoietos). No, what matters is the new kind of seeing. The icon is supposed to originate from an opening up of the inner senses, from a facilitation of sight that gets beyond the surface of the empirical and perceives Christ, as the later theology of icons puts it, in the light of Tabor. It thus leads the man who contemplates it to the point where, through the interior vision that the icon embodies, he beholds in the sensible that which, though above the sensible, has entered into the sphere of the senses. As Evdokimov says so beautifully, the icon requires a “fast from the eyes”. Icon painters, he says, must learn how to fast with their eyes and prepare themselves by a long path of prayerful asceticism. This is what marks the transition from art to sacred art (p. 188). The icon comes from prayer and leads to prayer. It delivers a man from that closure of the senses which perceives only the externals, the material surface of things, and is blind to the transparency of the spirit, the transparency of the Logos. At the most fundamental level, what we are dealing with here is nothing other than the transcendence of faith. The whole problem of knowledge in the modern world is present. If an interior opening-up does not occur in man that enables him to see more than what can be measured and weighed, to perceive the reflection of divine glory in creation, then God remains excluded from our field of vision. The icon, rightly understood, leads us away from false questions about portraits, portraits incomprehensible at the level of the senses, and thus enables us to discern the face of Christ and, in him, of the Father.

Unlike another spiritual classic, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, written in present-day Netherlands slightly later, this work was (no pun intended) unknown to me until about two or three years ago. Then all of a sudden, I was seeing it everywhere. It would be referenced in one book, and then another, until my curiosity was piqued. I was shocked to learn that the author of such a work was (not again!) unknown.

Nevermind. So I finally grabbed this modern translation of the original Middle English (presumed written by a Carthusian monk in Great Britain) and eventually got around to reading it. The book consists of 75 extremely short chapters, some a half page long, with the longest around three or so pages.

The basic premise is that you need to let go of your conceptual idea of God because it stands in the way of actually getting to know God. Because we are all susceptible to this, we actually have to keep at this repeatedly. What we think of God needs to be let go of, so that we can get to know him, again and again. It all sounds so Jedi mind trick, but if you relax and let the proposal penetrate you, much like faith, believing becomes seeing.

Or so that’s how my interpretation of it goes. If you start to read more widely, you are likely to see references to this book. It’s probably less frustrating if you have already read this book by the time that becomes a regular occurrence.

Do not let me leave you with a false impression: I do recommend this book. You will just need to be prepared for a very different sort of reading experience. It’s just a slippery sort of topic. A little hard to grasp at first, but it can be done.

Here is all of Chapter 5, “The Cloud of Forgetting”:

If you want to enter, live, and work in this cloud of unknowing, you will need a cloud of forgetting between you and the things of this earth. Consider the problem carefully and you will understand that you are farthest from God when you do not ignore for a moment the creatures and circumstances of the physical world. Attempt to blank out everything but God.

Even valuable thoughts of some special creatures are of little use for this exercise. Memory is a kind of spiritual light that the eye of the soul focuses upon, similar to the way an archer fixes his gaze upon a target. I tell you, whatever you think about looms above you while you are thinking about it, and it stands between you and God. To the extent that anything other than God is in your mind, you are that much farther from God.

I will also say, with reverence and respect, that regarding this exercise, even thinking about the kindness and worthiness of God, of any other spiritual being, or of the joys of heaven contributes nothing. These are uplifting and worthy subjects, but you are far better off contemplating God’s pure and simple being, separated from all his divine attributes.

– pg. 11

(NOTE: See the discussion of the less-common usage of “simple” at the bottom of the post for The Sanctifier.)

UPDATE: There is an impressive documentary on the Carthusians, which is available for streaming free online: Into Great Silence (the comment at this site states that there are no subtitles, nor are any needed–while largely true, there are scripture quotes interspersed throughout, and the version streaming on Netflix has subtitles for those, which you might want).

This book has the distinction of containing the prayer most commonly associated with Thomas Merton. It is also unique in that it does not carry the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur that usually appear at the beginning of his books. No matter, as there is very little of what would pass for doctrine in these pages.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-in-solitude/feed/1Thoughts_in_solitudeunwobblingpivotLove Set Freehttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/love-set-free/
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by Martin L. Smith, SSJE (1998)

This is a short and reverent book, slightly larger than pocket size, approximately 70 pages. If the inside back cover didn’t tell you the author was Episcopalian, you might never guess.

The quote inside the front cover, from Chapter Three, “Intimacy”, will work here:

Through this simple pledging of Mary to the beloved disciple and of him to Mary at the foot of the cross, the evangelist takes the new commandment to love one another and places it directly in the vortex of death and self-offering. By doing so John squeezes every remaining drop of sentimentality out of our understanding of love. Love, love–the word is always ringing in our ears, but when is it not mixed up with something else? Love and the desire to possess, love and the need to control, love and the need to be needed, love and the lust to absorb, love and condescension, love and narcissism. In the Christian mystery love itself must be crucified, must die to be reborn as the grace of communion, as love set free. In a mysterious sign the evangelist points to the new home of the beloved disciple as the place where this has happened, the household from which the church’s authentic identity has its origin.

– pp. 38-39

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/love-set-free/feed/1Love_set_freeunwobblingpivotFire Withinhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/fire-within/
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by Thomas Dubay, S.M. (1989)

This is widely considered Fr. Dubay’s master work. It’s like a key that helps to unlock extra meaning from his other books. It is also the best preparation to reading St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross for yourself. Without this preparation, I am certain I would have given up, or maybe not even tried in the first place.

The greatest thing about Fr. Dubay is, while it is initially far from obvious, he says what he means and he means what he says. Repeated readings make that impression stronger and stronger. He is thoroughly convincing because of this. I cannot think of another author for which I could say it quite that way. He is unique in that regard.

From Chapter One, “A Question of Relevance”:

Because we are all without exception called to the heights of holiness, this volume is emphatically intended, also without exception, for all men and women in every way of life. When later we examine the inner reasons why this must be so, it shall become clear why our two saints are accurate in their assessment and fully in accord both with Scripture and the mind of the Church.

– pg. 4

A book on advanced prayer is a book on advanced joy. It is a love story, a book about being loved, and loving, totally. It is a book on holiness, the heights of holiness to which the Gospel invites everyone.

Still, we must face the fact that there are people who think the message is too good to be true. Strange as it may seem, among these people are not a few contemporary priests and nuns. It is regrettable, but understandable, that there are those that reject it out of ignorance, men and women who may know of our two saints only from hearsay, not close contact. Not infrequently, among these are religious who were told in their early formative years that Ss. Teresa and John “are not for you” and who could not find these saints’ works in the convent library, for they were erroneously judged as dangerous. Others, very likely, have heard stray bits about the nada doctrine and supposed it was only one spirituality among others that one could take or leave with impunity. Invariably these are people who have so tenuous a grasp of the New Testament that they would be astonished to learn that these two Carmelites say nothing significant that is not already in the Gospels and the canonical Letters of Paul and Peter, James and John. It is one of the tasks of this volume to show this last point to be true.

But how do we face the further fact of people who have read the sanjuanist and teresian works and who either misunderstand the message or forthrightly reject it? Few if any of these are serious scholars, but they do include some nuns, friars and priests. It may be useful to listen to their objections and respond briefly to them before proceeding further.

Perhaps the most frequent objection bears on the nada doctrine, the drastic detachment taught by both Teresa and John but especially emphasized by the latter. Death to one’s senses and desires is unhealthy if not impossible, it is said, and we understand better today that we can find God not in negation but in affirmation, joy and celebration. Mortification, penance and self-denial are considered to be of the old school, whereas an emphasis on delight and jubilation is more appealing nowadays.

The full response to this objection may be found positively explained in our chapter on freedom, for thorough understanding is the best answer to partial views. A few short comments will suffice for now. People who argue against detachment and self-denial are perhaps unaware that they are simultaneously rejecting the same teaching found in the New Testament. Jesus lays it down that to be his disciple, anyone and everyone must “renounce all that he possesses”, not just part or most of it. In Titus 2:12 we read that “what we have to do is give up everything that does not lead to God”. John and Teresa ask not a whit more . . . or less.

I am reluctant to say much about this book (as I unconsciously also was about The Everlasting Man, apparently), because discovering what it’s about is too enjoyable to spoil for you. I will say that I cannot think of another book that has such an ostensibly off-putting title and then turns out to be as every bit as lively and open-minded as the title appears to suggest only dullness and rigidity. That is quite a triumph. And a thoroughly delightful one indeed.

One thing that I cannot omit: Chesterton was about 100 years ahead of his time. Lucky for us. He is so very readable today.

One more thing: I have seen mentioned somewhere that this is a companion piece to GKC’s Heretics, which preceded this book by a couple years.

I will again give a taste of this great work with a couple of quasi-brief excerpts.

First, from Chapter VI, “The Paradoxes of Christianity”, this is without a doubt my favorite quotation on courage:

[T]ake the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ‘He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,’ is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.

– pg. 94

And following on the heels of that, a couple of lines later, comes this sublime passage:

And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise between optimism and pessimism–the “resignation” of Matthew Arnold. Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go clad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them.

It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny–all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of one’s self, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go–as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, qua man, can be valueless. Here, again in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.

– pp. 95-96

UPDATE: I have tagged this as Anglican, though I believe Chesterton himself was already a Catholic in his heart by the time this was published. He would wait more than a decade before making his Catholicism officially explicit. By the time The Everlasting Man was published, he was formally a Catholic.

I had almost forgotten how good this book is. Luckily I had left a few bookmarks throughout the book that helped me locate the parts that really made an impact on me. Archbishop Martinez is an enjoyable writer to read, which I had really forgotten. Strange, as I had read this only about two years ago. Not so strange, perhaps, due to the other good books I have read since then.

Martinez, a Mexican archbishop, wrote this sometime before his death in 1956. It was promptly translated into English and published a year later, with an observation by the translator that this was overdue. That hint is the closest I can come to determining when the original Spanish edition was released.

There is an abridged version of this called True Devotion to the Holy Spirit, which leaves off the fourth and final–and worthwhile–section on the Beatitudes. So be warned that an online shopper might be prompted to purchase both of them together, with that ever-present suggestion, “readers who bought this, bought that”. If they did, they shouldn’t have.

(You can read a few pages, common to both, from the abridged edition.)

After a section consisting of a succession of short topical chapters that share the title of the aforementioned abridged edition, follow a section on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (first referenced by the prophet Isaiah) and another on the Fruit of the Holy Spirit (which ought to be familiar to anyone who has read the epistles of St. Paul).

I particularly like his treatment of the Gifts, as he always gives a hierarchy of each gift. For instance, about the Gift of Counsel, he first talks about natural human prudence by which we conduct our worldly affairs. Then he speaks about supernatural virtuous prudence through which we navigate the difficulties of life. Finally he goes into divine prudence, which he tells us is the Holy Spirit’s Gift of Counsel, describing it as the equivalent of getting advice from above the level of our intelligence, and further outlining three degrees of progress in this gift. I can hardly do it justice in one summary paragraph, so I encourage you to read it for yourself.

I will give an excerpt, though. I would be tempted to take it from Chapter 18 of Part I, “Our Response to Christ Crucified”, but it would be too lengthy. Indeed, it would be tempting to offer most if not all of that chapter. Instead I give you something shorter from Part IV “The Beatitudes”. Here follows a relatively short passage from Chapter 8, ‘The Seventh Beatitude “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” (Mt. 5:9)’:

The fruit of wisdom and love is peace. But have we not said that peace was produced in the soul by the virtues and gifts proper to the earlier stages? Did not the first three beatitudes bring peace by tearing out of the soul the roots of restlessness? And did not justice and mercy establish proper relations with others?

The work accomplished by the active life was indeed a work of peace, but it was negative. It was the war that prepared the peace by shattering our enemies; it was the relentless sickle that prepared the harvest by cutting down the weeds; it was the strong wind that hurried the dark clouds along so that the sun might shine.

Pure peace is something divine that only wisdom and love can produce. To be peaceful, it is not enough to live in sweet concord with our brother. It is not sufficient to have all our powers in tranquil harmony under the empire of the will. Rather, all the desires of the soul must be fused in one single divine desire, all flowing as one great torrent, with no scattered currents of affection anywhere. The soul must be simple as God is simple, so that all things can be unified.

– pg. 338

(NOTE: The term “simple” as used above is not meant in the usual sense to convey any of: unintelligent, uncomplicated, humble, or unadorned, which are all common meanings of the word. Here it is used in the less-common sense of “undivided; whole; not complex; not made of many constituent parts each subject to analysis”. This is a recurring connotation that you will run into in many spiritual writings.)

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/the-sanctifier/feed/2The_SanctifierunwobblingpivotNo Man is an Islandhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/no-man-is-an-island/
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by Thomas Merton (1955)

As mentioned earlier, this is a step back to cover concepts that were taken for granted in Seeds of Contemplation six years earlier. And the chapter titles alone testify to this: “Conscience, freedom, and prayer”, “Being and doing”, “Sincerity”, “Mercy”, “Silence”.

Do not let the simplicity of the chapter titles fool you. This is a challenging yet rewarding book to work your way through.

See the following excerpt from Chapter 11, “Mercy”, for a sample of one of the best passages:

This book opens with the text of homily-like talks that Cardinal Ratzinger delivered to Pope John Paul II and members of the Curia in a retreat that took place during the first full week of Lent in 1983. That alone makes this book remarkable and unique. Ratzinger is extraordinarily consistent: whether it is a formal academic work or the saved text of a speech, the quality and depth is characteristically world class. He can be a bit challenging to read at times, but this book is not one of them.

An excerpt from Chapter 12, “The Paschal Mystery”, should help solidify the point:

The Pasch was celebrated at home. Jesus did so too. But after the meal he got up and went out, went beyond the limits of the Law by crossing the brook Kidron, the boundary of Jerusalem. He went out into the night. Not fearing chaos, nor hiding from it, rather he went into its depths, even into the jaws of death. “He descended into hell, ” as we say in the Creed. He went out. And this means to say accordingly, though the ramparts of the Church are the faith and love of Jesus Christ, the Church is not a fortified citadel but an open city. And hence to believe means also to go out with Jesus Christ, not fearing chaos, because he is stronger, because he has gone there, and we, as we go out into it, are following him. To believe means to pass beyond the wall and into the midst of the chaotic world, to create with the strength of Jesus Christ a space for faith and love.

The Lord went out. This is a sign of his strength. He went out into the night of Gethsemane, into the night of the Cross, the night of the tomb. He went out because his love bears within it the love of God, which has greater power than the forces of destruction. It is therefore precisely in this going forth, along the way of the Passion, that the victorious deed lies, and already in this mystery is to be found the mystery of paschal joy. He is the stronger; there is no power which could resist him and no place which he is not. He calls us to attempt the way with him because where there is faith and love, there he is, and there too is the strength of peace which overcomes death and emptiness.

Dr. Kreeft (pronounced “crayft”) is a Boston College philosophy professor and C. S. Lewis enthusiast/scholar. And he is one heck of a writer. He has a talent for clearing up a confusion the reader was not aware they even had, until he cleared it up for them. That is quite an achievement. It takes somebody of both talent and advanced education to accomplish that, without making the reader feel inferior or without introducing yet another confusion in the process.

The strongest part of the book is the latter half where he pits the Seven Deadly Sins against the Beatitudes in a match-up whose outcome is clearly never in doubt, but also never lacking in interest to the reader.

Here are a couple excerpts from Chapter Seven, “Poor in Spirit vs. Proud in Heart”:

Pride is not the same as vanity. In fact vanity, though it is a sin, shows some humility. For if I think I need your admiration, then I do not feel wholly independent of you, above you. The truly proud person couldn’t care less of what others think of him.

– pp. 99-100

In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis says that God appears to us like an uncle to a slum child playing with mudpies in the street, offering us a vacation at the seaside, but we stick to our mudpies. We are too easily content. Poverty of spirit is not mediocrity and cheap contentment; it is exactly the opposite; it is detachment from the mudpies for love of the sea. The Buddhist and the Stoic and the “peace of mind addict” teach detachment for the sake of tranquility or nirvana, but the Christian wants to be unclothed with the world and the goods of the body and the body itself only to be reclothed with Heaven and the resurrection body. Christ opposes selfish desire only to replace it with unselfish desire, not with emptiness. We are to be spiritually poor only for the sake of becoming spiritually rich, detached from what we can own so that we can be attached in a different way to what we cannot own, detached from consuming so that we can be consumed by God.

There can be no imaginable higher praise for this book than to point out that C. S. Lewis credited this book for his conversion to Christianity.

With that, let’s give an excerpt that opens the second half of the book:

This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born. But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. It is at least like a jest in this, that it is something which the scientific critic cannot see. He laboriously explains the difficulty which we have always defiantly and almost derisively exaggerated; and mildly condemns as improbable something that we have almost madly exalted as incredible; as something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true. When that contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy has been repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasised, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled, in a hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals, pictures, poems, and popular sermons, it may be suggested that we hardly need a higher critic to draw our attention to something a little odd about it; especially one of the sort that seems to take a long time to see a joke, even his own joke.

UPDATE: In the post for Orthodoxy, I state that GKC was about 100 years ahead of his time. One of the best examples is found in this book–and it falls only one page later than the above quotation:

Here begins, it is needless to say, another mighty influence for the humanisation of Christendom. If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why); the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin. When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a new-born child. You can not suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a new-born child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a new-born child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother; you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.

This little book was almost overlooked. But the title seemed familiar. It had the same title as the excellent blog of Dr. Anthony Lilles , but then I vaguely recalled he had mentioned a book by this name in his Hidden Mountain, Secret Garden. So I picked it up. At under $10 and just shy of 115 pages, why not?

The first section is an interview with Bloom on his conversion from being anti-church and anti-Christianity to ultimately being an Orthodox Archbishop (this after a career as a medical doctor). Don’t skip this. It is longer than you would expect in a book of such short duration, but it is a worthwhile read.

Here are a couple of excerpts. First, from the chapter titled “Going Inward” are the first few lines:

I have said that one of the problems which we must all face and solve is: where should I direct my prayer? The answer I have suggested is that we should direct it at ourselves. Unless the prayer which you intend to offer to God is important and meaningful to you first, you will not be able to present it to the Lord. If you are inattentive to the words you pronounce, if your heart does not respond to them, or if your life is not turned in the same direction as your prayer, it will not reach out Godwards.

– pg. 55

And then from “Addressing God”:

A relationship becomes personal and real the moment you begin to single out a person from the crowd. That is when this person becomes unique in his own right, when he ceases to be anonymous. Someone has spoken of ‘the anonymous society’ in which instead of having names and surnames and qualities and personality, we are defined in general terms like ‘the ratepayers’, and so forth. In our relationships with people there is very often this element of anonymity: ‘they’. We speak in the third person when we feel someone can be easily replaced by someone else, because the relationship is functional, not personal, and this function can be fulfilled by someone else, while this person would not be replaceable by anyone else. In other languages I would have said that the relationship becomes real the moment when one begins to think of a person in terms of ‘thou’ instead of ‘you’. It does not require a change of language, it is an inner change. You know very well, I am sure, that one can have this ‘I’ and ‘thou’ relationship or an ‘I’ and ‘it’ relationship with someone.

Prayer begins at the moment when instead of thinking of a remote God, ‘He’, ‘The Almighty’, and so forth, one can think in terms of ‘Thou’, when it is no longer a relationship in the third person but in the first and second persons.

The fiftieth anniversary edition labels itself as “An Autobiography of Faith”. Fair enough, though most people might already know that by 1998. At over 450 pages, this is a long book. It takes time to get through. Some of the comments on Amazon are less than positive or charitable, but many of those refer to typos in the Kindle edition, while others come across as anti-Catholic, and still others as flat out anti-Merton. So be warned. Merton has his detractors.

This book is full of little surprises that I would hate to ruin for you, so I will say very little in terms of details. I will at least give some random vague references of things you might find unique or of interest:

His time at Columbia University in the 1930’s. His time at St. Bonaventure in Buffalo, NY. His terrible troubles with dental health. His memories of his parents, especially his father. Also his relationship with his younger brother, John Paul. His first visit to America from Europe. Experiences in Harlem. His time spent in old European cathedrals. His literary ambitions. The authors that influenced him. His initial visits to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. And not insignificantly, hints of what would characterize his later writings, a sample of which is found here:

The above passage falls about one-third of the way through the book and is unique to the book. There is no other passage that is similar in the rest of the 450 pages. I believe that was intentional, but even if it was not, it foreshadowed the best works that Merton would publish over the next dozen or so years.

Personal note: My mother mentioned this work to a friend when I was about 10 years old (mid 1970s), her enthusiasm giving me the impression she had recently read it. While I was reading it a couple years ago and discussing it with her, I learned that she had read it shortly after it first came out, when she was probably a sophomore or junior in high school. Here I was thinking that I had been reading it at approximately same age as she did, but I was quite mistaken.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/the-seven-storey-mountain/feed/2The_seven_storey_mountain_50thunwobblingpivotThe Joy of Full Surrenderhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/the-joy-of-full-surrender/
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This work also goes by the titles Abandonment to Divine Providence and The Sacrament of the Present Moment. It was written sometime before the death of Caussade in 1751, but the exact date is unclear. It was first made public 110 years later in 1861 and only first truly published in 1966. Because of the controversy surrounding the Quietism movement, which the author disavowed, these writings meant for a group of nuns were closely guarded, and even highly edited for their 1861 unveiling.

Here is Chapter 9, “Holiness Made Easy”, in its entirety:

I believe that if those who are seriously striving after holiness were instructed as to the conduct they ought to follow they would be spared a good deal of trouble. I speak as much of laypersons as of religious. If the former (that is, laypersons) could realize the merit concealed in the actions of each moment of the day—I mean in each of the daily duties and actions belonging to their state of life—and if the latter (that is, those who are members of religious orders) could be persuaded that holiness is found in what seems unimportant to them, they would all indeed be happy. If, in addition, they understood that the crosses sent them by Providence—crosses that they constantly find in the circumstances of their lives—lead them to the highest perfection by a surer and shorter path than extraordinary states or spectacular works, and if they understood that surrender to the will of God is the true philosopher’s stone that changes into divine gold all their occupations, troubles, and sufferings, what consolation would be theirs! what courage would they derive from this thought: that in order to acquire the friendship of God and to arrive at eternal glory, they have only to do what they are doing and to suffer what they are already suffering, and that what they waste and count as nothing is enough to bring them the greatest holiness, far more than any extraordinary state or wonderful works!

Dearest God! how much I long to be the missionary of your holy will, to teach everyone that there is nothing so easy, so simple, so within the reach of all, as holiness! I wish that I could make people understand that just as the good and the bad thief had the same things to do and to suffer in order to be holy, so it is with two persons, one of whom is worldly and the other leading an interior and wholly spiritual life. One has no more to do than the other. The one who is made holy gains eternal blessedness by submission to your holy will doing those very things that the other, who is lost, does to please himself, or endures with reluctance and rebellion. The difference is in the heart.

Beloved souls who read this! It will cost you no more than to do what you are doing, to suffer what you are suffering. It is only your heart that must be changed. When I say heart, I mean the will. Holiness, then, consists in willing all that God wills for us. Yes! holiness of the heart is a simple “Let it be,” a simple conformity of the will with the will of God.

What could be easier, and who can refuse to love a will so kind and good? Let us love God’s will, and this love will make everything in us divine.

– pp. 20-21

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/the-joy-of-full-surrender/feed/1the-joy-of-full-surrender-4unwobblingpivotGod Wants You Happy: From Self-Help to God’s Helphttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/god-wants-you-happy/
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by Father Jonathan Morris (2011)

Forget if you have an aversion to anyone known as a Fox News Analyst and whose book is recommended by the likes of Glenn Beck (fallen-away Catholic and convert to Mormonism), Bill O’Reilly (a loosely-defined pro-life Catholic), and Rick Warren (a mega-church Protestant pastor). This is a GOOD BOOK.

Fr. Morris embeds a lot of sound traditional Catholic theology and spirituality in what only appears to be a pop-psychology book.

Chapter 3, titled “Getting Unstuck”, which is basically about the insidious influence of the Devil and his lies, should remove all doubt.

His exposition on the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love further grounds this work in solid Catholic-Christian theology.

[Paul] says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say: Christianity was not only “good news”–the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known–it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.

– pp. 9-10

This is only about 100 pages. The final one-third of the encyclical, which provides a great illumination on the topic of Purgatory, is particularly strong.

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/saved-in-hope/feed/2SIH-HunwobblingpivotHappy Are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedomhttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/happy-are-you-poor/
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by Thomas Dubay, S.M. (2003, originally 1981)

This may be the single hardest book to read I have ever encountered. It masterfully challenged assumptions I took for granted. It’s like a bucket of cold water thrown in your face.

What makes this book most difficult of all is that it holds up an ideal that seems to be unattainable. Yet it will change you for the better, if you let it. I know I changed a lot of my economic habits as a result of this book. I continue to realize ways in which I fall short, but I am better off for these realizations than if I never had them. I keep trying and trying to approach even the resemblance of attaining the ideal held out by this book. And I continue to be humbled as I uncover new ways (old really–just new to my consciousness) in which I fall way, way short.

I should add that Fr. Dubay gives one area where you should not skimp: spiritual reading material. Give yourself a generous allowance for that. Good advice I have found.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of the writings of Thomas Merton, who is considered in some more traditional circles as controversial, is that he invariably sought and received the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur. In addition, his references to the Eucharist in his other writings convey such reverence–and all this as a pre-Vatican II author (meaning that he–as a monk known first as Brother Louis, then soon after as Father Louis–was referring to the now oftentimes controversial traditional Latin Mass). He also displays great devotion to the Blessed Virgin. While I have read very little of his post-conciliar material, I can say without reservation that his pre-conciliar writing is soundly orthodox, while at the same time it hints at some of the best post-Vatican II developments in doctrine. I suspect he may have influenced some of the council fathers, and not the ones who rushed headlong into taking liberties in its aftermath.

New Seeds of Contemplation, as the reader will learn in the Preface, is an updated re-release of Seeds of Contemplation released 12 years earlier (just one year after The Seven Storey Mountain put him on the literary map in 1948). In 1955, Merton would publish No Man is an Island, in which he explains that Island (which is no small challenge to read) covers ground that Seeds took for granted. New Seeds of Contemplation, while nominally more advanced in topic than Island, is not inaccessible by any means. It is quite possibly the one book I have revisited the most over the last two and a half years since I first read it. What I notice when rereading it, is that the first two to three chapters open up more and more each time. That said, the second half of the book is the best part.

I first became aware of this book when I read a lengthy excerpt in an anthology of mystical writings. The chapter that was excerpted is the 37th of the 39 in this volume: “Sharing the Fruits of Contemplation”. That was enough for me. I quickly acquired a copy.

Rather than continuing to talk around this excellent spiritual work, I will let you see some of its finest offerings for yourself:

]]>https://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/new-seeds-of-contemplation/feed/2New_seeds_of_contemplationunwobblingpivotDeath on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Crosshttps://menspiritualreading.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/death-on-a-friday-afternoon/
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by Richard John Neuhaus (2000)

This book was published a year before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It could not have been timed better. I did not discover it until 2012, reading it three weeks into the Easter season. Nevermind that it was too late for Lent–with the author’s repeated appeals not to move too quickly past Good Friday on to Easter, it seemed unexpectedly appropriate to read it well after Easter. That is not to say it is not good Lenten reading: I reread it in Lent 2013, and it worked there, too.

This book does not falsely advertise itself: it really does read like a meditation. The blurb on the back cover is spot on: “Writing in the tradition of C. S. Lewis and Thomas Merton, Neuhaus sets out to unpack the macrocosmic truth of the Seven Last Words of Jesus, a truth that sets Good Friday apart from all other days, even from all other holy days.”

If you only know former Lutheran Fr. Neuhaus for his political commentary, you will be in for a surprise. This is pretty much a purely spiritual book, with nary a trace of the political in sight.

I hope to read it again soon.

Here is an excerpt that rivals the style of the great G. K. Chesterton:

Dr. Lilles has a very poetic writing style that, at its best, captivates the reader. There are passages where this is true sporadically throughout the first 100 pages of this work. The second 100 pages are almost entirely characteristic of this style. The first 100 pages seem like a warm up once you have gotten deep into pages 100-200. This is a very rewarding book. I would go so far as to characterize it as a modern classic. Yes, it’s only two years old. Still true.

After God awakens us spiritually and we set out on a pilgrimage through the darkness of our hearts to find Him, we soon discover that this quest is being taken up in the midst of a great spiritual war. Unlike a platonic worldview where the higher realms of spiritual existence are more peaceful than the worlds of material being, our apostolic faith reveals there is a war in heaven, and the earth is an enemy-occupied battlefield. The enemies we confront in this war and the battles we are given to fight are not distractions. God uses these spiritual enemies who stand in our way to lead us deeper into the mysterious nights in which He awaits us in love.

This excellent little book comes in at around 130 pages. It is a little uneven at times, and that might be due to having two authors. In spots, it is sublime.

The premise is that there seems to be a tension between spirituality and formal worship that ideally ought not to be there. The authors attempt to make the case that Christ sought to overcome this split in leaving us the Eucharist. They point out how odd it is that Christ seemed to be against formal ritualism, yet chose to leave us with a rite–just as he was headed for the climax of his earthly mission, the Cross.

They do an inspired job of attempting to get into the mind of Jesus and uncovering his possible thought process. It is the chief surprise of this book and worth reading for that payoff alone.

UPDATE: You will likely notice that the references to the texts of the Mass do not reflect the revision to the English version of the Roman Missal which came out at Advent in 2011.

Some may wonder why, when on our recent men’s retreat, whose theme was about being Catholic men/fathers–why would I write and share something (The fires of Hell are the fires of God) that didn’t really specifically fit the theme.

This book is largely why. I will let a quote do the talking for me.

‘When I give retreats to married couples I address this issue head on: “You husbands and fathers say that you love your wives and children. OK, I am going to take you seriously. Now if you love them really (that is, for their genuine welfare and not simply for what you can get from them or whether they do or do not return your love as you would like it to be returned)–I repeat, if you love them really, then prove it in the best possible way: become a saint, get rid of your faults, love totally. Why is this the best thing you can do for them? Your impact for their genuine, eternal welfare will be tremendous. Yes, you also show love for your wife and children by putting bread on the table and a roof over their heads, but the best proof of genuine love is found in the example of an exemplary life: a tremendous spur to their eternal enthrallment, and yours as well.”‘